Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday chaired a meeting of senior government officials and top executives of telecom service providers in Jammu and Kashmir and discussed various security-related issues, including monitoring and subscriber data verification, with them.
During the meeting, the Home Minister was briefed about the security concerns by various intelligence agencies and state police. He was also appraised of the delay in getting information from the telecom operators.
Mr. Chidambaram asked telecom operators to provide data on real time basis and also to fasten up the subscribers verification process, sources privy to the meeting said.
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The meeting was attended by Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh, Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Kuldeep Khoda, senior ministry officials and senior executives from various operators, including Bharti airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor, Vodafone Essar Cellular Managing Director Sunil Sood and Reliance Communications CEO C.S. Rao.
Telecom Secretary R. Chandrasekhar could not attend the meeting.
The operators also informed that it was difficult to meet the stringent conditions about verification of customers, but assured that a data bank would be soon made available to the law enforcement agencies.
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Senior officials said while there would be no relaxation in the verification of customers, but the state machinery could be used in exceptional cases where the telecom operators were finding it difficult.
There are seven telecom players, including BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Idea, Reliance Communications, Tata Indicom and Vodafone operating in J&K. These telecom companies provide post-paid, as well as pre-paid mobile services in the State.